Lakes Of Russia
Stars Decorate The Fire
7 Track, LP (2008, Afterdark Records)
Related: Lakes Of Russia.


Lakes Of Russia’s main (well, only) protagonist, Melbournian Jake McGinn, isn’t short of ambition. Six of the seven tracks on his debut album Stars Decorate The Fire run in excess of five minutes, with two of those breaching the ten-minute mark. As a one-man band (save a couple of guest collaborators here and there), he’s responsible for every layer of sound on this record (although presumably not Archie Bell and the Drells-style), which is no small number of layers.

McGinn’s take on slow-burning instrumental rock is nothing that hasn’t been heard before – indeed, the hypnotic, repetitive motifs and subtle, Reich-esque changes are the preserve of such post-rock powerhouses as Explosions In The Sky and (early) Mogwai. And if familiarity doesn’t exactly breed contempt in this instance, it does foster a certain malaise, a feeling of ‘yeah, sure, but why bother?’

Which isn’t to say that Stars Decorate The Fire is to be written off as entirely without merit. ‘Flight Pattern’ (featuring piano from Zoe Jackson, of Light Music Club fame) features chiming guitars beautifully intertwined with the piano of Zoe Jackson (Light Music Club), while the epic ‘Fireflies’ (at an attention-span-challenging twelve minutes) manages to sustain (if only just) a certain dramatic tense mood with its glimmering guitars and brittle melody.

The addition of Jackson’s piano and the cello of Caz Gannell (of fellow Melbourne instrumentalists Laura) to several tracks brings a much-needed warmth to Stars Decorate The Fire and goes a long way towards alleviating the insularity that McGinn’s isolationist tendencies might otherwise encourage. And although the album mightn’t score any points for originality, its wealth of delicate, brooding atmospheres makes up the difference.

by Adam D Mills

A new CD of classical chamber music by a contemporary master who has been redefining new music since 1972 with cutting edge bands like Henry Cow, Keep the Dog, Skeleton Crew, Massacre and Cosa Brava. Featuring the virtuoso cellist Joan Jeanrenaud (formerly of the Kronos Quartet), percussion madman William Winant (who has worked with everyone from Lou Harrison, Steve Reich and John Cage to Mr Bungle and Sonic Youth), pianist/conductor Stephen Drury with his remarkable Boston ensemble the Callithumpian Consort, and the Belgian virtuoso Daan Vandewalle, Back to Life presents a sparkling program of five major chamber works by this imaginative and courageous border crosser.
ARTISTS
Stephen Drury: Piano
Joan Jeanrenaud: Cello, Newspaper, Metal Can
William Winant: Marimba, Vibraphone, Woodblocks, Tamtam, Tuned Gong, Large Metal Plate, Toms, Bass Drum, Beans, Ping Pong Balls, Hammer

The fact that most of the indie online community spent the bulk of last week waxing nostalgic about Neutral Milk Hotel’s opus and (so far…) swan song In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, is a testament to that album’s endearing resonance and effortless grandiosity, so much so that a decade removed, anything even slightly resembling Jeff Mangum’s tortured croon and baroque arrangements (i.e. Decemberists, Beirut) is showered with accolades even if it’s incapable of eclipsing this generation’s Sgt. Pepper’s.

Moonbeams, the debut from Seattle’s Throw Me the Statue is not exactly the second coming of Aeroplane but it is an imagined carnival of synths, bubbling tropical brass and sundrenched melody – worthy of giddy enthusiasm and multiple studied listens. Here Scott Reitherman (with a little help from some friends) forges a sound too ramshackle and carefree to carry such a torch. If anything Moonbeams embodies Mangum’s (and the entire Elephant Six Collective’s) inner-child, and that spirit is let loose to express itself within a bedroom full of eclectic musical toys and oddball love lyrics.

“Lolita” and lead single “About to Walk” are the bright buoyant gems that define his pop ambition. The latter, the most immediate, a cut-and-paste of cloudy distortion, acoustic strums, answering machine messages, and boundless melody. The songs on Moonbeams are catchy to the point of being almost too saccharine (”This is How We Kiss” bringing to mind first contact with Fountains of Wayne), the twee addition of xylophones and hand-claps don’t help to diminish the sugar rush.

Reitherman though does not lead us through the circus without humbling the us with bread. The album’s second half projects a mood of heart-on-sleeve emotion to balance the initial blast of whimsy. The title track in particular owes artistic gratitude to the Oldhams and Callahans of the folk world, sung in fragile quivers but still sounding hopeful, triumphant, even if it could all tumble with the wrong utterance from his lover.

While the album’s status as a “classic” may only come in flashes throughout, the rest of the time Moonbeams is irresistible fun without being overly cheeky. For that it’s hard not to recommend, especially with spring around the corner.

Throw Me the Statue - Moonbeams [2008]

http://www.scjag.com/mp3/sc/abouttowalk.mp3

Grande disco flips!

Slim Cessna’s Auto Club comes from the amazingly incestuous Denver country music scene. The only real constant in the band has been Slim Cessna himself, but Jay Munly has served as a pretty key member over time. SCAC writes big songs, I don’t really know how else to describe it. They aren’t heavy, they aren’t loud, and they’re rarely disposable. They are often labeled as “gothic country” due to the intermingling of Old Testament and apocalyptic religion with bad relationships, alcohol, and murder. If nothing else, SCAC is, IMO, one of the best bands in America that hardly any one’s heard of, and they just released what might be the best album of the year in Cipher.

Cipher is woven together by four hymnal refrains entitled “An Introduction to the Power of Braces”, with each focusing on a different part of the person, Arms, Legs, Teeth and Faith respectively. They seem to loosely divide the album into four themed sections, but I have not been able to get a clear grip on that yet. Between that and the hidden messages in the album’s artwork, one can see how appropriate the title is. The album, thematically, is a lot darker than their previous efforts, but still features their signature harmonies, Cessna/Munly vocal push-pulls, as well as an unrivaled level of musicianship.

The Secret Life desfaz em pouco tempo um dos seus muitos segredos: pode o restante ano estrebuchar e multiplicar-se em lançamentos, e só muito dificilmente conseguirá amanhar um álbum tão autêntico e vibrante quanto este – o primeiro - no que respeita ao melhor uso conferido ao entusiasmo e “garra” que se apodera de alguém quando finalmente descobre um total à vontade nas suas manifestações artísticas, mesmo que essas sejam assumida e militantemente gay. Mãos ao alto então para receber o assalto desarmante de umas New Bloods que parecem ter ultrapassado umas quantas inseguranças e outras mais barreiras politicamente correctas para até aqui chegarem.

Entende-se que todo esse esforço foi justificado, quando, após assimilado o factor político inerente ao disco (ao qual acresce o facto de dois terços da banda serem afro-americanos), sobra apenas uma organização interna em tudo pronta para descomplicar as vias de comunicação entre os vértices: Cassia toma conta do baixo como se o pós-punk fosse uma invenção exclusivamente feminina, a mais robusta Adee gere a força e alcance do seu impulso com uma bateria polivalente em mãos, Osa toca violino como se convocasse o protesto e união de todos os povos ciganos - todas cantam como um coro de punhos revoltosos em determinados momentos mais amazónicos, e em conspiração comunal noutros mais reflectivos e cientes dos ciclos femininos. A guitarra, esse vil instrumento de contornos vagamente fálicos, fica de fora e não faz falta nenhuma.

Tudo o resto serve como arsenal de retaliação apontado a todos os sacrifícios impostos às vidas secretas de quem viveu demasiados dias aprisionado num armário de opressão. Parece até que a dualidade – provavelmente exercitada em experiências pessoais passadas - serve agora às New Bloods na oscilação dinâmica entre registos que, num The Secret Life desabafado de uma só vez, cruza o inadiável “doa a quem doer” de um pós-punk à flor da pele (inevitavelmente polvilhado pelas Raincoats), cumpre escala nalguns momentos mais próximos da poesia beat declamada como lida às entrelinhas das cicatrizes, e não evita sequer a sensibilidade exposta do lindo e harmonioso momento a capella que é “Day After Day” (versão de um original dos Earth & Stone, nome algo obscuro do reggae mais próximo das raízes).

A Kill Rock Stars – desde sempre dedicada a ampliar o tempo de antena reservado às mais inconformadas artistas femininas - volta a bater a sua picareta contra ouro puro na escavação incansável que leva o selo de Olympia (Washington) por aconselháveis paragens do subsolo do rock norte-americano. Terá de ser um segundo disco a decidir se é viável ou não a desconfiança do pobre perante tão generosa esmola, mas, por agora, The Secret Life vale como pepita à parte.

Miguel Arsénio
migarsenio@yahoo.com
16/04/2008

Singer
Unhistories
(Drag City, 2008)

I wasn’t sure what to think of this record, on first listen or on the 15th. Still don’t actually, even as I attempt to write this review. It’s weird; it’s intriguing, confusing, at times off-putting, at other times pleasantly mind-bending, and it’s just altogether definitively different. It doesn’t rely on familiar building blocks on which a song is typically built. Its strangeness swells at each turn, but it’s not avant garde… although it’s close. I’ll throw post-rock out there, if I’m to go ahead and generalize a very un-general thing. In a nutshell, Singer asks quite a bit from their listener. They’re putting it out there like that because it’s what they do, and some of it, because of its foreign nature, is hard to swallow. So, the question at hand is: Are you up for a walk in the dark blindfolded? Because that’s exactly how it feels to listen to Unhistories, at once both scary and kind of funny.

It’s so unstructured, creepily mellow but at the same time flat-out loony, creating this constant strain to understand, that I’m asking myself throughout Unhistories if it’s something I particularly enjoy or not. Every time I want to write them off, there’s a big “but” in there that keeps me from doing so. And that’s because somebody out there should be pushing musical boundaries. If someone’s going to, it should be those who it would naturally come from anyway, and not from someone trying to push a boundary merely for the sake of it. And, in the case of Singer, a band made up of four Chicago guys well-adept at experimenting with rock music, in theory this “anti-supergroup” of sorts should be it. They are: Todd Rittmann (US Maple), Robert Lowe (90 Day Men, Lichens), and brothers Adam and Ben Vida; all guys with bands that have spent the better part of the last decade taking post-rock to its outer fringes. As they come together to form Singer (where, yes, all four of them sing), the band essentially sounds like all of their previous projects rolled into one. If you know their previous bands, you know that’s one spicy enchilada.

For all the reasons you’d want to go and hate on something like this, it’s probably those same things that drive the band to get carried away like they do. And, it’s not as if they’re implementing crazy new technologies to creatively supplement their music. It’s two guitars, bass, and drums… extremely convoluted. For this, I have to give them a lot of credit. That, in and of itself, is an artistic statement whether or not it makes any sense to me or you. And, yeah, I’m putting off actually mentioning specific songs, because for me the individual songs don’t matter all that much. Unhistories sounds like one long song that has more moments of musical muck than melody. Even while they attempt to launch our minds into orbit with their take on the future of rock music, the future of rock music sounds a bit tedious actually.

At the end of the day, I’d go see Singer live to see how they pull off something so unstructured on the stage. Do they replicate these songs in their entirety? That’d be something else. In that way, Singer is undeniably exciting, even if much of their music gets constantly caught up in long patterns that are unvarying and soporific, oftentimes breaking the monotony with strange sounds instead of substance. Maybe that’s the thing. Unhistories is at times so uncomfortable that it almost doesn’t feel natural, which allows it to confuse a listener long enough to make it hard to think that this record might very well be contrived.

In 2005 The Wedding Present returned to the front of my mind when they released Take Fountain, their first album in about eight years. Always enjoying previous efforts from David Gedge (in Cinerama and Wedding Present forms), it was nice to see that the group didn't miss a beat, and still had a knack for creating the same earnest style of music, something similar to The Smiths.

On their newest venture, El Rey, David Gedge picks up right where the team left off in 2005. The main difference is that they decided to collaborate with the legendary Steve Albini, and the album was written while Gedge was residing in Los Angeles. As a result, a shadow of the seedy underbelly of Hollywood is a theme that flows throughout the album, with topics ranging from lust, regret and obsession.

In classic Wedding Present form, there are some great jams on the release; the bittersweet "Palisades" with an ending that shreds, the opening notes on "Santa Ana Winds," and the cynical "Don't Take Me Home Until I'm Drunk." Not every song on El Rey rips with tense passion, there are quieter moments showing vulnerability such as "The Trouble With Men" and the Belle & Sebastian-esque "Swingers" (a personal favorite).

The band will be touring North America this fall, so be sure and keep an eye on The Tripwire for an announcement of their upcoming dates.

Valentine's Day this year is an excellent opportunity to spill (no pun intended) my love for Belong. It seems like there have been a lot of people doing this lately thanks to that tour-only CD-R that hit the web a month or so ago, and now this. But I tell you, October Language is hands-down one of the best records of 2006. There are many contributing factors for its notoriety - not least of which being that Turk Dietrich and Michael Jones began recording the record in 2004 and finished just before Hurricane Katrina hit - but the beauty of its ambient shoegazing has rarely been matched. It is this technique of understatement - as well as placement - that makes them appealing as the minimal yin to, say, M83's extravagant yang.

They also play in another world of introversion, of minor disturbances in dreams deep in the night. Belong are, to put it another way, a nocturnal group. Fundamentally, they exist to soothe the hearts of wrecked landscapes and to try and make sense of that which we cannot always understand. This is what the unconscious is all about, and gossamer gushes of guitar haze seem to be most apt at putting the puzzle together.

So when I read initial reports that Colorloss Record, pressed in 250 copies of vinyl with handmade covers, was to feature vocals and consist entirely of covers, I was skeptical. This sounds like a significant shift for a group that is looked upon fondly for ambient, wordlessly original works. It's divided fans who were so devoted to October Language, but has also found new believers with an EP that points in a new direction for a full-length due out later this year (with another EP in between these two releases).

Luckily, this new direction is not so dramatically different from before. The swirling guitar brainwashes you as blurry as ever for these songs, which aren't easy to find the sources for. The press release prefers to point to these interpretations as seashells for the originals, which one can hear listening to Syd Barrett's "Late Night." British psychedelia must weigh heavily in the duo's iPod playlists, because the other three songs also originate from late-60s UK 45s: Tintern Abbey's "Beeside," Billy Nicholls' "Girl From New York," and July's "My Clown" complete the set.

"My Clown" in particular is an excellent blend of the old Belong and the new Belong. Taking these vocal samples and delaying them nearly beyond recognition, what you're left with is the vague outline of the melody, tracing the medium with your finger. Barely represented but beautiful all the same. "Girl From New York" perhaps best merits a My Bloody Valentine comparison, while William Basinski disintegration looping crops up on "Beeside." There are a lot of excellent reference points that will have already been pointed out by the time I finish writing this, but the moral of the story is that there are a lot of fascinating new possibilities that this EP opens up and it will be thrilling to see what comes next.

If you're more the type to buy hand-cut vinyl than Hallmark cards for your honey, ditch the Godiva and get on Colorloss Record while there are still copies. This ought to make up for all those nights you spent not calling her back because you were too busy "absorbing" In Rainbows back in October. I can't make the language any clearer than that, lover. Good luck out there.

The Wedding Present - El Rey [2008]

http://rapidshre.com/files/110960088/TWP-ER.zip
http://rapidshare.com/files/110936100/The_...nt_-_El_Rey.zip

With over 25,000 records sold since their debut in 2000, this Somerset based five-piece are perfectly poised to break into new territory after signing a new deal with new label Kscope, a division of Snapper Music. The band’s ‘bitter sweet’ progressive sound has been nurtured over the past 7 years over 6 studio albums. Initially a solo studio project by singer/songwriter Bruce Soord, the band evolved onto the stage as the ever faithful international fan base demanded it. In between recording sessions, the band has taken time out to play in front of thousands of fans, including sell out ‘invite only’ shows in the UK and festival appearances in Philadelphia, USA and Tilburg, Holland.

The new album Tightly Unwound is poised for release on May 19th. Undoubtedly their finest album, The Pineapple Thief are perfectly positioned to announce themselves onto the world stage in 2008.

Tracklist:
My Debt To You
Shoot First
Sinners
The Sorry State
Tightly Wound
My Bleeding Hand
Different World
And So Say All Of You
Too Much To Lose

Montreal's music scene is like a clown car: just when you think it couldn't possibly have room to contain any more talent, some more emerge. The City of Saints can already lay claim to Billboard chart-toppers (Arcade Fire), Polaris Prize winners (Patrick Watson), punky Francophone ambassadors (We Are Wolves), no-wave revivalists (Les George Leningrad), noise rockers (AIDS Wolf), rappers (Gage), electro-funk party-starters (Chromeo) worldly indie pranksters (Islands), plus all the members of Wolf Parade and their many side projects. And now it can add ambitious, sun-baked trio Plants And Animals to the ranks of its growing community of celebrated musicians.

Like a distant Canadian cousin of Blitzen Trapper, this three-piece spins shaggy songs into expansive, genre-bending symphonies. And though last year's too-brief With/Avec EP hinted at Plants and Animals' expansiveness, it didn't fully prepare listeners for Parc Avenue, a sprawling collection of rootsy melodies, majestic arrangements, and classic rock riffs that owes as much to jam-band psychedelia and it does to delicately orchestrated chamber-folk.

The album kicks off with "Bye Bye Bye", which sounds, initially, like a Coldplay ballad led by Neil Young. But, mere seconds into the song, it explodes into a choral epic built on a foundation of jaunty pianos and embellished with plangent autoharp runs and bursts of stately brass. Tellingly, the track's infectious climax is more satisfying because it comes in fits and starts, its anthemic build interrupted several times by quiet interludes of noodley folk.

That, in short, is Plants And Animals. They offer up explosive, Polyphonic Spree-sized choir choruses, 1970s AM radio guitars, cozy folk balladry, and rambling stoner boogie-often in the course of one song-- and switch between them with little warning. Many of their songs clock in at over five minutes long, but that's all the better for them to pick up steam, stylistically mutate, or expand. "Faerie Dance", which also appeared on the EP, explores multiple genres and tempos within its seven-minute run. Its dreamy opening is marked by ethereal backing vocals, but then gives way to a wiry, disorienting guitar melody that churns in opposition to melodramatic strings. Just when you've given in to its post-rock vertigo, a lackadaisically strummed guitar pushes the tune into slacker-blues territory à la Mellow Gold. Likewise, the album's centerpiece, "Mercy", marries a Phish-like guitar vamp and jazzy, cymbal-heavy drumming to Go-Team!-ish cheerleader chants and handclaps. Saxophone belches add some welcome hard-edges to the loosey-goosey jam, and singer Warren Spicer offers, as counterpoint to the chipper cheering, a growling Sean Connery impression.

Spicer's lithe tenor, in fact, proves malleable over the course of the album, adapting to dispassionate talk-singing, raggedy country warbling, and arty, dramatic vibrato. His Beck impersonation on "Faerie Dance" is followed by "Feedback in the Field", on which he cops a convincing Tom Petty accent ("Somethin' in the air to-nye-ite"). "New Kind of Love" begins like a spare Iron & Wine ballad, but builds to theatrical, Arcade Fire levels of orchestral splendor. And on "Sea Shanty"-- which starts out like Ryan Adams' "Amy", minus the confessional self-pity, and evolves into meandering Lynyrd Skynyrd-style Southern rock-- Spicer is able to affect a honeyed croon.

From its scrawled, lower-case liner notes (complete with mistakes and cross-outs) to its sound, everything about Parc Avenue feels homemade. Its analog recording, which took place, in part, in Spicer's apartment, crackles with warmth and intimacy, and because the guest artists who fill out these orchestrations (including Arcade Fire/Bell Orchestre's Sarah Neufeld) are friends of the band, a sense of camaraderie prevails. Plants and Animals may not be the first band to put Montreal on the musical map, but, with this album's there's-no-place-like-home vibe, they are certainly the first to celebrate it so warmly.

-Rebecca Raber, March 13, 2008

Peter Broderick’s amazing debut album is now out, and my first copies arrived on my desk today. Think non-vocal, filmic, multi-instrumental, delicate, structured mesmerism.

This is the first album I’ve designed in a while and it feels great to have worked with Peter on it - I think we’re all very pleased with it.

The limited edition vinyl is hand-stamped on reverse card with a simple grass motif on the centre sticker.

The CD disc features the same design, with my photography making up the booklet.

I took all of the photos in two one hour sessions at Cannon Hill Park in Birmingham in summer las year and then used the grass as the inspiration for the rest of the artwork. I’m fascinated by bokeh and I wanted to have an almost ‘bokeh only’ image on the cover to make it all feel slightly ethereal and to tie in with the title ‘float’.

And we wanted to move Type away from the ‘we’re really cool and trendy’ sans serif face of the last few years towards something more traditionally typographic - so I used a serif face for all of the text.

I’m pleased. Now go and buy the album on CD or limited edition Vinyl from Boomkat.

alguns + o seguinte leva bolacha,
slim cessna's auto club - cipher[alternative tentacles, 2008]

http://www.mediafire.com/?j10yg4e9iqu




flying lotus - los angeles (warp - 2008)

alguns + o seguinte leva bolacha,
slim cessna's auto club - cipher[alternative tentacles, 2008]

http://www.mediafire.com/?j10yg4e9iqu

Perhaps the most fitting release for a group like Unwed Sailor, Little Wars was recorded from December of 2002 until November of 2007. Not surprisingly for the instrumental group — who’s only consistent member has been founded Johnathon Ford — a total of seven people contributed to the recording of Little Wars. As difficult as piecing together an album stretched out over nearly five years and between seven people may be, it seems Ford has done it. More than that, he has overcome the dull mediocrity of The White Ox from 2006.

As the opening track and building block for Little Wars, ‘Copper Islands’ is a hooking start. A relatively short instrumental track, with quick climaxes and rapid-fire of different melodies– themes that are further elaborated on later in the album. Unwed Sailor attempts to connect each song together last seen in their most brilliantly achieved The Marionette and the Music Box in 2003, in which the entire release told a fairy tale-like story through the connectivity of each track. Fittingly, drummer Matt Putman and Matt Depper (Lovedrug, Bear Colony) as well as guitarist Nic Tse (Jacky Cheung) who contributed to The Marionette are featured here as well. Tracks like ‘The Garden’ and ‘Aurora’ feed directly into each other, lulling the listener into their gentle cadences and glazing right over the track break.

Indeed, Unwed Sailor’s songs flow with their subtle twists and turns, to the point that even a minor ripple may swift by unnoticed. Tracks like ‘Campanile’ and ‘Lonely Bulls’ are not powerful post-rock attacks of climaxes, but gentle melodies of ambient tinkling. Yet, this is not the dull ambience of past releases. Similar to the modest melodies of The Album Leaf or Fireflies, Unwed Sailor presents shimmering instrumentals that are by no means catchy, if not especially attractive. Fittingly titled, Little War’s namesake track is delicate and subdued, yet many instruments chime at once - creating a sense of quiet uproar. Of little wars.

If post-rock peers Explosions in the Sky or Godspeed You Black Emperor! are dark stormy nights, then Unwed Sailor is life during the next morning; bright, sunny, sometimes dull, but evermore worth doing again tomorrow. Perhaps, like The White Ox, there is an overabundance of material and lack of presentable interest, but Little Wars so gracefully floats by that one wants, if not needs, to listen to it again. Whether or not one will enjoy (or understand) Unwed Sailor after that second listen, or after a dozen for that matter, is up to question. More of a skirmish rather than the combat Wars is filled with subtle sonic folds–an intrigue that will bring listeners back for more if they care to.

Michael Schmit

Peter Broderick - Float [2008]



http://sharebee.com/19e3ee84
pass:haloid
(thanks to http://deletedscenesforgottendreams.blogspot.com/)

Obrigado pelas bolachas (cuidado com a quantidade de links postados de discos recentes...).

Three years after their wave-making Boogie Angst, the Dutch outfit return with an LP that fires soul, funk and hip-hop with the urgency of the dancefloor. The Brit-soul wunderkind Ben Westbeech guests on the epic Squeeze Me while the title track imagines Michael Jackson at the Berlin Love Parade and a trip-hop cover of Man of Constant Sorrow - the bluegrass anthem from O Brother Where Art Thou? - is both strange and splendid. It sags slightly in the middle, but overall this is a dance album with rare personality.

Brooklyn's Lights enchant on their self-titled Language of Stone debut. Produced by Espers' Greg Weeks, the three-girl harmonizing (by Sophia, Linnea, and...Wizard Smoke?) combined with forest spirit mythology and gothic undertones make for deliciously psychedelic, and sometimes dark, treat. Like being stuck inside the Wicker Man and actually enjoying it.

The second release on the small Lidar Productions label, the debut album from the Bersarin Quartet mixes string orchestration (as one might expect) with electronic beats and lush programming. Apparently just the work of one semi-mysterious fellow named Thomas (and not a true quartet), the ten songs and just under an hour of work on this self-titled release calls to mind the work of artists like Marsen Jules and others who make sixteen strings an active component of their sound.

"Oktober" opens the release, and falls into that endlessly evolving category of music for imaginary films. Dramatic string sweeps build up slowly before some clomping beats enter the mix and soft synths accent the melodies. It's lush and grand without being overly dramatic, which is something that can be said for the album as a whole. The gorgeous "St. Petersburg" is another standout, with some repeated piano refrains that reverberate through filtered clouds of strings before some jittery percussion jumps into the mix and adds a bit of tension without ever really locking into a real groove.

In other places, strings are nearly completely absent, and Bersarin Quartet drifts into the soft sort of folktronica that Helios has done so delightfully over the course of several albums. "Endlich Am Ziel" lopes along with some quiet brushed drums and acoustic guitar melodies while white noise hiss and quiet electronics fill in the back corners. In other places yet (like "Inversion" and the nearly nine-minute "Und Die Welt Steht Still"), the album drifts into a gooey, drifting ambience of filtered strings that's certainly cinematic, but not quite as engaging as the more developed tracks. I mentioned Helios before, and this is the sort of release that would definitely appeal to fans of that artist of the Type Records (or City Centre Offices) labels in general. It's solid stuff, just waiting for the movie of your life to soundtrack.

KAN MIKAMI - Juw (PSF 8027; Japan) "Latest in PSF's popular long-running series of solo releases by Kan Mikami. It's another coruscating slab of truly individualist Dada-folk-blues, obliquely twisted songcraft that refuses to pander to the banal realities of contemporary society. For those that choose to partake in its bounty, there's richness aplenty here -- the utter devastation and the unbearable ecstasy of the quotidian, transmitted just through six strings and the sandpaper rasp of Kan's vocal chords."

tracklist:
1. To The Green Town
2. You Are The Sun MP3
3. Kaiyon
4. Sweet Dreams, Fai
5. Silent Foam
6. Round Pool
7. Ana
8. Girl In The White Dream

Water Fai are a female four-piece from Japan who play post-rock in a similar vein to that of Explosions in the Sky and Mogwai. Noticing the lack of women in the post-rock scene, the girls felt they had to stand up and try and make a name for themselves worldwide, proving that it is not only the males who can really perform in this genre. Their music is well worth a listen for any post-rock fan, and the way they beautifully craft their melodies into full blown instrumentals, jam packed with a peaceful, calm emotion is astounding. I certainly recommend them and will be looking out for future releases. Girls in the White Dream has eight tracks, and is mainly a re-release of their demo record, 2004-2006, with the production honed to perfection and a few tracks deleted or edited to suit the wishes of the new record label. The entire album carries a dreamy feel which carries the listener away and releases him into a world as yet unvisited, where he can really have space to think and can be peaceful.

Opener “To the Green Town” sets the tone for this record; this seven minute tune epitomizes everything that Water Fai are. It has a repeated melody on the bass and a soothing drum beat, and the other two guitarists are almost allowed to wander off, occasionally allowing space for the drummer to maneuver a few basic fills in between. The next track “You Are the Sun” is one of my favourites on the album, and it includes a small vocal section, although I haven’t included lyrics in the ratings section, because on the few occasions they do sing, they merely chant a selected line, in this case the song title. “You Are the Sun” has a wonderful flowing feel to it which crescendos up and down and sounds like some kind of aural slide. Other highlights include “Silent Foam,” which features the most vocals used, and a slightly more chord-orientated melody, and closer “Girls in the White Dream,” my other favourite. The dynamics are varied throughout this record but are especially emphasized here, where the lead guitar trails around through all seven minutes. It’s another beautiful offering from the band.

Overall, while a clear pattern is established throughout the record, in no way does the album grow boring or sound repetitive. The layering and texture of the album is wonderful, and how it all comes together, especially under the control of the new, more experienced producer, sounds fantastic. It gives a dreamy sound, and though it is obviously influenced by previous artists, it is uniquely unparalleled in today’s scene. These four ladies definitely deserve more recognition.

"The current Directing Hand line-up – consisting of Vinnie Blackwall on improvised vocals, cello, harp and harmonium and Neilson on drums and psaltry – represents the group’s starkest incarnation to date. Blackwall is a classically trained vocalist, though she rarely makes a move that could be associated with any particular school. Sure, there are moments of tongue pressure that orbit the art trance of early Meredith Monk or Julie Tippett’s work with the Spontaneous Music Ensemble circa One Two Albert Ayler but there’s also a ton of mystery in the way that she seems to incorporate snatches of mellifluous choral and early music melodies in between full-body soundings and vegetable wordage. When you first catch it, it’s as shocking as an Australian in cut-offs, but as you surrender your brain to the glorious see-sawing command with which she pilots the furthest vectors of her body into sound, it seems to have the same connection to free jazz as the divine madrigal stylings of Dolly Collins on Anthems In Eden and Love, Death & The Lady had to the triumphal melodies of the Albert Ayler Orchestra. Neilson’s playing is at its most formally aggressive throughout, detonating time by exploding any notion of accompaniment, response or precognition in favour of a profound simultaneity. Drummers have always been the revolutionary agents of musical change; switch up the beat and you reconfigure time, reconfigure time and you re-draw reality. In Neilson’s playing there is truly no past or future, simply Now over and over. Just one movement of his hands and then the next. And in a historical/cultural moment as oppressively 4/4 as 2008, it feels like a fucking revolution. At the heart of this – their first ever duo recording - are three versions of traditional folk songs that deal with the myth of resurrection: “My Son David”, Two Brothers” and “What Put The Blood”. But rather than bolstering the duo’s connection to ‘the matter of Britain’ in song and dance, they serve to provide a reflective context for the freely improvised pieces while simultaneously emphasising the whole death and re-birth cycle that is as vital to the evolution of the arts as it is to the biographies of the Gods." - David Keenan.

Among indie bands, one of the more annoying trends is the always mediocre remix album. Including Grizzly Bear and Minus the Bear (seeing another trend?), countless bands like to hear other bands and DJ’s interpretations of their music, although to fans and critics they often sound like garbage. Mojib, however, recently produced one of the most notable remixes of current music by being the first to remix a song from Radiohead’s In Rainbows- “Videotape.” In fact, he put it out the day of the release. And unlike certain reviewers posting reviews the day of release, it was actually good. His remix takes advantage of the song’s minimalism, leaving him plenty of space to make his own interpretation. He keeps the repetitive descending piano line and Thom’s haunting vocals, but adds countermelody, a more energetic drum beat and a backing choir for more effect. In many ways, Mojib changed the character of the song, therefore transforming it into something new. He avoids sounding cliché and canned. On October 10th, over 25,000 people downloaded the remix.

With his rise in popularity, all eyes turn to Mojib with the release of his second album, Whimsical Lifestyle. As if he crafted a master plan, his album will appeal perfectly to all the people who heard his quickly crafted remix through the use of poppy melodies and recognizable samples. Along the way, he includes Jaga Jazzist and Bright Eyes, among others, without reservation or caution. His confidence in using songs Radiohead fans will instantly recognize establishes a strong sense of self-awareness. Also, it fittingly establishes the whimsical, for lack of a more original word, atmosphere of the album. The song “Lifesaver” would work perfectly as a simple, laid-back song based on the guitar samples; with the inclusion of the Jaga Jazzist choir vocal sample, however, he adds depth to the song as if on a whim. Throughout each song, Mojib changes the focus of individual sections while still connecting everything with common motifs, whether a drum groove or a chord progression or a bassline.

While most songs on the album sound cheery and energetic, Mojib takes sometime to portray a more reflective mood, most notably on “Break of Dawn.” The leaping string sample mixed with the repetitive piano make a musical climax that, while still maintaining the mood of the album, sounds more inspired than peppy. This segues into “The Garden Part Three”, a continuation of songs from his first album Class of ’00, which uses a more minimalistic approach. With haunting female vocals lightly hovering over low, dark strings and piano, the lack of defined rhythm causes a much needed lull in intensity. Apart from this section in the middle album, Whimsical Lifestyle employs a repetitive albeit effective formula. His samples often serve one of four purposes: to establish a chord progression (usually through piano or guitar), to convey a melody, to create dramatic effect (usually with vocal samples), or to distract the listener from the repetitive nature of sample-based music. The last purpose sets apart the music apart from other instrumental hip-hop and electronica in that the music always moves forward.

Despite this formulaic approach, the samples are interesting and different enough to not get terribly repetitive. The dramatic vocal sample in “Home Is Where the Heart Is” shouts rather than sings, first through a crowd chanting, fitting perfectly with the accents of the drum beat, and then eventually converges into one man shouting about fighting for humankind, standing up against lies and uncovering the truth. In the use of these samples, Mojib obviously pays homage to DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing, a clear influence on the album. Whimsical Lifestyle, while not as memorable as Endtroducing, feels very similar in atmosphere, although much happier and carefree. It feels extremely conceptual and well-planned. From such a powerful music scene as Gothenburg, Sweden, it is no surprise that Mojib keeps his music so relevant to current musical trends. Luckily, he never falls into any traps of cliché style, and remains original, if not riding along rather than pushing ahead. His calculation for success is perfect, and anyone who enjoyed his “Videotape” remix should certainly listen to Whimsical Lifestyle for a consistent trip hop release.

Alperin, the Ukrainian pianist who recorded for ECM from 1989 to 1998, seemed tailor-made for the label, fitting its image of northern-European melancholy; his first album was even called Waves of Sorrow. Now, the former classical musician is a professor of jazz and improv, and this return to ECM is a sparkier affair - though its references remain more overtly classical than jazzy. The album reunites him with the Russian French horn player Arkady Shilkloper and the German cellist Anja Lechner. The keyboard virtuosity is awesome: check the buzzing-bee agility over slow countermelodies on Vayan, or the alternately coquettish and frenzied Jump. But the album's dominant quality is the power of its compositions, which are all Alperin's except for Shilkloper's and Lechner's dialogue on Russian Song. The lovely title track has a gentle child's-dance piano part, and Tiflis displays a horn sound you could warm your hands on. It's barely a jazz record in the usual sense, but it can't be put in a single category, except the one marked Special.

RAINY DAY SONG is the first release of new Ed Askew material since Ed Askew/Ask the Unicorn (ESP-Disk, 1968). The scarcity of commercially available Ed Askew albums belies an artist in perpetual bloom - painter and songwriter poet. After graduating from Yale Art School in 1966 Ed began teaching art in New Haven and shortly thereafter released his eponymous debut (later re-named Ask the Unicorn). Ed Askew recorded a follow up called Little Eyes that ESP-Disk chose, for unknown reasons, not to release (This album was finally issued on CD in 2007 by De Stijl Records).

And now forty years have passed since the original ESP-Disk release and Ed Askew has a formidable backlog of unreleased music. Rainy Day Song, his most recent work, was recorded in the summer of 2007 in New York City, where Ed has lived since moving there from New Haven in the 1980s. He says: “When I start a song it’s a kind of virgin situation. There are certain things I do and I have my character like everybody has their character. But I believe on some level that it comes from nothing … there are certain things you do … but in a sense: who does it?”

Karen Dalton hated the tag "folk music’s answer to Billie Holiday". What she would have made of being labelled "the best singer you’ve never heard of" by a broadsheet last year will remain anyone’s guess, since Dalton died in 1993.

What makes her legacy so intriguing is the way Dalton has acted as a bridge for American folk music through the decades: turning the 1960s Greenwich Village crowd on to Appalachian mountain music and then, posthumously, inspiring new wyrd folkers from Devendra Banhart to Joanna Newsom. Theserough and ready home recordings are harrowingly real.

Haven’t written on this site for ages due to being very very busy in my new job.

However, this album is just amazing. Good, raw, dirty Duo505 sound - standout tracks are “Last Summer” and “Don’t Turn The Music Down”.

Superb.

Manifest might be the Chessie pop album. I mean, the 2004 Camping collaboration with German bossa nova singer Henning Fritzenwalder could almost correctly be considered the Chessie pop album, consisting, as it did, entirely of actual pop songs with lyrics and choruses and all those obvious pop music cues. But that was clearly a side project, and a bit of an anomaly anyway. Seriously, bossa nova? The Chessie moniker, on the other hand, has long been guitarist Stephen Gardner’s (originally solo, since 2000 with childhood friend Ben Bailes) showcase for deeply atmospheric sound-paintings on the exclusive subject of train travel. It’s a pretty specific niche, and one that Gardner and Bailes have a solid claim to by this, their fourth album. And despite the continuing lack of voice or words, it’s still the closest thing to a pop album we’re likely to hear from a duo perhaps most reasonably described as “concept drone.”

But this is the pop album, so those drone tendencies, vast and lovely and seemingly bottomless on 2001 masterpiece Overnight, have been reigned in a bit since. Gardner’s guitar, long known for being treated and manipulated into near-insensibility (think Fennesz, think Electric Company), actually sounds like a guitar here, more than ever, at least. The odd song out on Overnight was the surprisingly propulsive—perhaps even jaunty—“Daylight”. I mean, clearly a song called “Daylight”, on an album called Overnight, was going to hit a somewhat contrasting vibe, brighter, and yes, sunnier. Catchier, for sure. That’s more or less the vibe Chessie seem to have taken as the starting point for Manifest.

What this gives us, sound-wise, is an album with a surprising emphasis on brisk guitar hooks, buzzing keyboard accompaniments, and steady-rolling steam-driven percussion. Soundtracks to the exhilarating speed and momentum of transcontinental locomotion, rather than Overnight’s pensive, moon-bathed solitude. Roaring through and over mountains, rather than staring at them over silent, plain-spanned distances. Maybe even out on the caboose platform, hair in wind-blasted disarray, waving as a station roars past, instead of peering intently from a darkened car through a dim, narrow rectangle of window glass, two fingers raised to trace along the rivets of the window frame.

Of course, it’s still a Chessie album, so the tracks still gleam with broken guitar shimmers and pops and little distorted breaths of melody, and a great deal of attention is still paid to minute sound design and detailing. But even when the album gets sparser and more drone-oriented in its second act, it’s still miles of metal rail apart from, say, the bleakly wind-wiped expanses of a past great like “Northern Maine Junction”. Rather, the album opens up with a semi-distorted digital processing study like the most forcibly immediate Fennesz pieces, only with perhaps clearer melodic development. From there, on to Manifest’s answer to “Daylight”: the rapid guitar chug of “Intercity”, which seems to take every tendency of the older track and ramp it up, develop it further. The catchiness of “Daylight” was in the mesmerizing repetition of its pulsing guitar lines; with “Intercity” we get a constant, natural progression of such themes, each building from the last and pushing the song forward. The track is practically all hook. “Long Bridge” follows, its clean, regular strumming par for the course here, where it would have seemed an uptempo peak on the past discs. Likewise “High Line”. “Alone Together” makes a shift back towards the quietly textural, but it’s still “alone together” and warmed by sparkling glockenspiel notes. Most of Overnight is better summarized as just “Alone”.

But Overnight wasn’t simply quieter and more nocturnally spacious. Its murky window-glass didn’t just look out on rolling hills and darkened skies, but reflected back something of the human faces of its creators as they stared through. There was always something affecting in its empty spaces and simple, barely-there melodies. The arrangements on Manifest, however consistently more developed, quicker progressing, and better filled out, seem to have lost some of that greater depth and restraint of the past. It’s the semi-paradoxical album where technical improvements in almost every regard haven’t necessarily made for a stronger work, taken as a whole. But at the same time, if there really is a step back here, it’s a subtle one that won’t be immediately evident, or perhaps even important, to many listeners. In fact, Manifest‘s heightened pop-sense probably has a rather greater chance at pulling in new listeners than any prior Chessie work. It’s just not quite Overnight, but then, few albums are.

By J Hunter Discuss


During his formative years in Chicago and Detroit, percussionist Adam Rudolph sat at the feet of a number of fantastic musicians, most notably Don Cherry and Fred Anderson. Combine that mentoring with Rudolph's years-long study of African and Indian rhythm traditions, and you get Cyclic Verticalism—a compositional matrix that allows the prolific percussionist's players to create their own space, while maintaining and contributing to a single rhythmic pattern. In less flowery terms, Cyclic Verticalism combines the creative concepts of jazz with the tribal framework of the drum circle. It is also the nerve center of Dream Garden, and its effect is extraordinary.

One of Cherry's mottos was “You have to respect the silence before you can respect the sound.” The listener gets to do both on the opener “Oshogbo.” A furious beat drives the piece, punctuated by abrupt blasts from the front line, augmented by a conversation between guitar and bass and Graham Haynes' hot cornet. Without warning the piece stops dead, leaving what will happen next up in the air. Resuming again similarly, but with renewed energy crackling like lightning, it stops dead again after a few knife-sharp clarinet lines from Ned Rothenberg. When it reboots a second time it's taken in a completely different direction where, instead of running through a wild jungle, it's in a peaceful clearing, dizzying from both the shift of the attack and the beauty of the tune's final; destination.


There are many gorgeous moments Dream Garden. There's the splendor of great flowing narratives on the lush (and aptly titled) “A Vision of Earthly Delight” and mysterious “Twilight Lake,” as well as the short, intimate sound poems, where members of Rudolph's formidable octet create layered pieces of World music, sometimes free-standing, sometimes as a precursor of what comes next.



Though there's plenty of the mystical here, there's straight jazz and funk too, including the bouncing closer, “Walking the Curve.” Jazz and the mystical travel side-by-side on “Spectral,” as unearthly Eastern percussion is broken up by staccato horn charts reminiscent of Art Blakey's take on Thelonious Monk's “Justice.”

Keeping with the Cyclic Verticalism credo, every player compliments both the music and each other. Hamid Drake—another Anderson protégé—works wonders on his trap set, letting Rudolph hand-drum each piece into whatever shape he wants. Steve Gorn's bewitching flutes do their best work in the sound poem format, particularly on the surrealistic title track. Even so, his breathy, off-kilter sound brings a spiritual tinge to the entire date. Guitarist Kenny Wessell and bassist Shanir Blumenkrantz team with multi-instrumentalist Brahim Frisbane to build a vibrant string section that matches the juicy front line step for step.

Rudolph has learned his lessons well, and he's found like-minded artists to help him paint amazing pictures. Dream Garden weaves a multicultural tapestry that links Chicago with Morocco, Detroit with Delhi. It is like a world tour, full of amazing surprises.

Heartbreaking and childlike, “Music Heard Far Off” evokes the surreal poetry of good Dylan with a saner than Daniel Johnston, but still as awed a worldview. If Brian Wilson had been born in 1970, he would have made this record at some point.

Even semi-abrasive tracks like the muted metallic sheen of “Planet Waters” or the lo-fi skronk of “A Tree Waits” have awesomely positive vibes. There is hope by the bucketsful in the seeming chaos and improvisational daring.

This is a naked record too, as the duo of Jason Honea (Social Unrest) and Loren Chasse (Thuja) offer literate haikus that sound confessional even when surreal. Listening to “Son of Man” in particular, one of the more stripped down tracks, feels like an invasion of privacy.

Guitars acoustic and electric drive the grooves, though there are touches of ambient and musique concrete, as well as a dull hiss that often appears as a kind of guide through this poetic and disorienting landscape.

The Child Readers can be trusted, and “Music Heard Far Off” makes you want to trust. This is a gorgeous, if unsettling release that mixes the avant-garde and traditional, the hermetic and open, in stunning fashion. 9/10 -- Mike Wood (22 April, 2008)

Where the hell have I been? I know it has been awhile but I have been quite sick and I haven’t had a whole lot of time to sit down and rest either. I have been running around between birthdays, shows, work and dinners…I am pooped and I am also not feeling any better because of it. So tonight I am just trying to sit back and relax with a little bit of music.



The beloved emusic turned me on to this goodness, Micah Middaugh and Bill Callahan are the duo who make up the band Breathe Owl Breathe. A mix of organic instruments a little bit of folk and a pinch of sugar just to make it unique and one of a kind. Their voices meld together and intertwine so beautifully it is really quite charming…I am in love. :-)

Being a solo acoustic female singer songwriter comes with its share of conspicuous baggage. And, Seattle’s Jesy Fortino, who records and performs as Tiny Vipers, has been spared little of it: she’s played coffee shops, on mismatched bills with by-the-book folkies, and fielded far too many questions that address her gender rather than her music. Fortunately for us (and, we can only imagine, even more so for her) these things all fall away when she plays. Inhabiting the space carved out by minimal guitar, gentle textures and stark, immediate vocals, Tiny Vipers’ music evokes the contrast and quiet, empty beauty of a grey northwest landscape. Jesy has spent the past two and a half years exploring these landscapes, locally releasing a few artfully-packaged CDRs and playing shows all over the Northwest. Recorded in Seattle at Red Room Studios in late fall of 2006, Hands Across the Void is Tiny Vipers’ first full-length record and her Sub Pop debut. Enlisting the help of engineer Chris Commons and friend, musician, and Austin music-scene expat Ben Cissner, Jesy used this opportunity to explore new textures, instruments and harmonies. The result is a uniquely striking record that’s as fully realized as it is spare and beautiful.

Finally, Audrey is back! And how we have longed for them to return with a new album. Sprawling over 11 tracks, “The fierce and the longing” sees the band exploring all new routes to those moments of musical bliss we have come to expect from the most talented four young women who make up Audrey.
With a dense and intense soundscape, arrangements that are all but immediate but still sound that way, Audrey’s new record is of the kind that grows and grows and grows… revealing more with every listen.
And filled to the brim with all those quirky details that make them sound unlike any other band. Our hearts burst with the pride of releasing this album.
Working with producer/engineer Mathias Oldén in the Mission Hall studio over the course of two weeks, the album fell to place without all the strain that characterized their previous album session for “Visible Forms”.
Confident that they had a great collection of songs on their hands, and performing like a well-oiled machinery after all the touring they’ve done since their first album, Audrey managed to go from empty tapes to finished album in just 3 weeks, mixing and all |…|

e onde anda o meu ep do micah p. hinson que prometeste?

Thrill Jockey is very excited to introduce you to Terrible Two, the brand new album from Baltimore’s Thank You. The album recording was engineered by Baltimore’s beloved J. Robbins (Yeasayer, Mary Timony, Jets to Brazil) at his studio and was produced and mixed by Chris Coady (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Celebration, TV on the Radio) at his studio in New York City.

Thank You is an athletic rhythm/action unit, made up of Jeffrey McGrath, Michael Bouyoucas, and Elke Wardlaw. They are three free individuals, subsumed into a collective form that spits out dank, skittering tracks filled with light and dark.

The band has been building up a reputation via their live show, which has left audience members joyful, overwhelmed, and ready to spread the word. A seeming telepathy occurs onstage. The band enters into musical dervishes, a union, a breathless chaos that results in one hell of a Saturday night and what seems like a musical fight.

Not to worry, though. The members of Thank You are longtime friends and musical collaborators, working hard to bring to life their wholly original compositions. Musical ideas are introduced and have conversations with one another, each track filled with new articulation and insight. The basics of drums, organ, and guitar build the foundation, but are augmented by whistles, cowbell, hobo harmonica, snappy loops, car horns, and whatever else might be at hand.

With the new album, building on the template they have created, under the otherworldly guidance of producer Chris Coady, the band has utilized live staples and new compositions to create a fully realized portrait. They sing, they dance, they go far away and come back. The listener taps their toes, nods their head, and smiles, welcomed into their glorious song.

It is safe to say that beat-diggers and electronic artists will have a rich resource in the recorded output of the band, each track having the potential to be chopped and screwed, looped and loped into new soundtracks and sample beds. Don’t wait for that to happen, though. Listen to Thank You and listen to the future now.

"All of the Stars" is Secret Shine’s second studio album, and their first in 14 years. The band took an unscheduled nine year break before returning in 2004 with the release of their back catalogue (After Years) on our new US label Clairecords, followed by two emphatically-received EPs of new material in 2006, and live shows in Europe and America.

"All of the Stars" encapsulates the passion of Secret Shine’s live power pop in the heart-thumping ‘Oblivion’, ‘Voice of the Sea’ and ‘The Sound of Light’ but is both delicate and beautiful in ‘All that’s left’ and ‘Last Leaves’. Secret Shine have lost none of the sumptuous boy/girl harmonies and celestial melodies (never more evident than in the heavenly ‘Stars in the Sky’) that made their debut album Untouched such a classic that is still revered in shoegazing circles today.

Secret Shine dedicated 2007 to write and record "All of the Stars" and demoed twice the amount of songs they needed for the album so that only the finest would survive. The band have grown on this record – the sound is stronger and more confident, expertly produced and directed by Shine protagonist Jamie Gingell. The band drift effortlessly between the epic, orchestral arrangements of ‘Café Crash’ and the sparse, haunting piano-led ‘Another Day’.

"All of the Stars" would sit comfortably alongside shoegaze classics like Slowdive's Souvlaki, My Bloody Valentine's Loveless and The Pale Saints' The Comforts of Madness, but Secret Shine have created their own unique treasure and possibly the new wave of ‘stargaze’.

PRESS:
“these three long songs crescendo, shake, and shudder like a dense, hot mist falling on your shoulders, filling your head with visions of vistas and weightless elation. It’s flat our majestic on the orchestral strings...like a trip by rail through snowy mountain ranges...” Big Takeover Magazine, No.6 in the Top 40 reviews Issue 60

“Immense swirling soundscapes that reek of the nostalgia of Slowdive but bristle with the undoubted influence of contemporaries Sigur Ros and Mogwai provide the orchestral backdrop to the mesmerising ethereal boy-girl vocal harmonies. Irrepressibly gorgeous” www.tastyfanzine.org.uk

“Armed with the ethereal mystery of the Cocteau Twins and the crunchy guitars of Lush, Secret Shine’s songs come in striking musical layers…‘Lost Memory’ is a blissful surge of gorgeous harmonies soaked with fuzzy and meandering guitar grooves; ‘Hit The Ground’ may be an exercise in orchestral feedback, but amidst all of the musical chaos, the voices of Kathryn Smith and guitarist Dean Purnell conflate in a stirring and melodic blend of shoegazing bliss.” Alex Green, Amplifiermagazine.com

Tracklisting:
Voice of the Sea
Know
Stars in the Sky
Café Crash
Another Day
Hate you when you smile
All that’s left
Oblivion
Last leaves
The Sound of Light

Parenting has never been the sort of topic that easily lends itself to good music. In fact, it’s often the sort of thing that comes around when a musician leaves behind a rock and roll soaked youth as they approach quieter, less turbulent – less musically interesting - times. That at least is one way of looking at things.

Annie Sachs, though, a single mother and the woman behind Tickley Feather – the latest addition to the Paw Tracks roster – is with this album taking an entirely different tack altogether. Putting together an assortment of Casio-crafted four-tracks during late nights spent at home with her young son, with this debut she holds up a weird, distorted mirror on the world of raising children. Lonely and innocent in equal measure, the album could be about anything, so hard to unpick are the half-whispered lyrics, but the sense of an artist working at the margins is undeniable.

Yet what given the circumstances could have been a mournful dirge ends up being something far more refreshing. What we get is an inscrutable but frequently joyful soundtrack to her world, with songs that whirr opaquely into life before abruptly superseding one another. And it doesn’t take long to realise that we are in for something a little different – only a few seconds, in fact. Opener I’ve Got Magic Inside My Bones Somewhere is an eerie spoken word prelude, featuring her son’s distant, echoing voice reading the song’s title in slow motion. It’s the first of several rather sinister intervals featuring the young boy, and each helps give the album a playful and yet somehow rather unsettling quality.

This album will of course help to raise her profile, but until now she has kept things very low-key. There may have been gigs with the Animal Collective, but apart from a couple of split 7” releases, there has so far been little in the way of output to tee us up for this album. In fact, the obscurity almost seems a natural consequence of her musical style: she told one interviewer that half of this debut was recorded in a leaky garage filled with golf carts. As beginnings go, it’s not the most glamorous, but this spiky, slanted cocktail of noise will probably win enough of us over to at least allow her bigger digs.

What we get then is a rich and occasionally bewitching hotchpotch of leftfield anti-pop. There may be rather too many fugitive pieces of no real consequence, but there are several highlights, from the enigmatic The Python to the plaintive, elusive Keyboards Is Drunk. Each track’s template of cheap keyboards and muttered vocals does however begin to grate after a while. It is quintessential lo-fi Paw Tracks, but one does yearn for a change of gear from time to time. Is there more to her voice, for instance, that the bargain basement equipment here fails to delineate? And beyond a sort of naive charm, is there more to her sound than endless variations on what sound at times like pre-programmed demo tracks?

Time will tell of course. But for starters this certainly has promise. It’s the question of where she goes next that is interesting. Drop the lo-fi overtones and she risks unbalancing the character of her sound. Keep things the same, though, and the patience of the listener may begin to wane.

Nicolai Dunger
Nicollide and the Carmic Retribution
EMI (Sweden)
Album Review

One listens to new Van Morrison albums like Geordies travel to Old Trafford - in misplaced optimism, rather than expectation. In 2001, Nicolai Dunger released Soul Rush, and it would be the best album Van Morrison had made in the past 30 years - jazzy, soulful, soaring and aching. Dunger is a singer-songwriter from Sweden, and Nicollide is his twelfth album/ EP. He has followed a wilfully eclectic course since then - following up Soul Rush, and the breakthrough Tranquil Isolation, with more of the same would have made him huge. Instead, he has released darker and darker material, released albums in Swedish instead of English (which he can't really be blamed for!), and generally done anything possible to make music that only he wanted to make. Nicollide sees him make a return to English, and to some of the strongest songs in an age. But he doesn't make it easy - among the Sufjan Stevens-like orchestration and instrumentation, there are a few tracks that would test the biggest fan. But, some here - Been Cheating, Too Free To Be Gone - are enough to make a grown man cry, such is there raw power.

When Nicolai Dunger wants to write a great song he can, but here they're mixed into a One >From The Heart Tom Waits romantic soundtrack and a Sufjan Illinois reverie. Having a listen on iTunes and downloading only the tracks you first like would be a shame - listen as a whole, and it makes a whole lot more sense.

The other night while listening to my iPod as I walked to see Stars of the Lid at a local venue, I realized that when I reflected on the evening later it wasn't going to be as the night that I went to see Stars of the Lid. No, I realized already then that I would remember it as where I was when I first heard Titus Andronicus's debut full length, The Airing of Grievances, on my headphones, on the way to the show. A New Jersey band that has recently seen a fair amount of critical attention, Titus Andronicus grabbed me in a way that perhaps I wasn't expecting (due to the fact that other recent blog-favorites have been less than impressive to me, I can honestly say I wasn't expecting it).

To start the story properly, I found my way to the Titus Andronicus Myspace page last week and was so blown away that by the time the first song was finished playing I had already submitted an order for the album via the band's website. After finding my browser seemingly stuck on their page, repeating the massive choruses and scorching guitars, I had to download it. I certainly couldn't wait for the U.S. Postal Service to deliver it to my door. That could take days, after all.

So on my way to the concert I played the record through my earphones; I don't know if I was expecting the rest of the album to be flat or for the singles to be the highlights, but The Airing of Grievances, it turns out, is the best rock album of the first half of 2008. There have been other solid records over the past few months, but none that have elicited such a visceral response. Listening to The Airing of Grievances, that a Stars of the Lid show was suddenly not in the cards, and I spent the remainder of the evening walking around the streets of Chicago with Titus Andronicus as the caterwauling, passionate and gritty soundtrack.

I say best "rock" album as both a put-down and compliment: Titus Andronicus don't break any new ground here, but what they do they do so well. They're Arcade Fire recast as a New Jersey bar band, The Clash's mission statement implemented with the Replacement's fuck-all nihilism. Everything there is to love about rock music seems to have a home on The Airing of Grievances.

For comparisons, Paul Westerberg and the Replacements are good place to start: Patrick Stickles seems to do that Westerberg-ian thing where he's winking and being vulnerable at the same time. Screaming "Your life is over" in the band's eponymous anthem, "Titus Andronicus" has both the desperation and vulnerability of someone pouring themselves into the very fabric of their art, and the winking "fuck-this" attitude of someone completely jaded about the meaning of art to begin with. It's the same quality that makes Let it Be-era cuts like "Androgynous" at turns funny, inappropriate and incredibly moving (depending on what you hear).

"Titus Andronicus" exemplifies what makes this band so great to begin with: Stickles' raw punk-rock ('77 punk, not Hot Topic punk) scream is a wild and beautiful mess that is only made palatable by the band's knack for blitzkrieg energy and accomplished arrangements. Mid-way through the track the band rewards you for putting up with it (it's our pleasure, Patrick), although once you've made it that far you're more than likely hooked. When the band arrives at the song's mid-point "your life is over" chorus, they pour sugar into the proverbial wounds left by the track's first half, adding full backing vocals that take it straight into the sweet spot of a great power pop song. Then, in an immediate turn of genius, the music cuts back to just drumming, leaving Stickles to briefly lead a group sing-along before the band crashes back in and destroys the chorus, storming through a jaw-dropping scream-along complete with a key change and trade-mark big finish. All in just over three minutes. Yes, it's that good.

The Airing of Grievances effortlessly varies itself, without straining the development of its own "sound." For example, the band presents a bizarro-Springsteen on "Joset of Nazereth's Blues," which rings out like the musings of a punk E-Street Band, but in actuality is more like a less-hardcore Constantines trying handle a Tom Waits song. The results are thrilling: when Stickles out-Obersts Bright Eyes on the phrasing of "You don't believe me now," holding the note through a long, awkward moment of self-loathing before delivering the knock-out line, "but you will/you will," as the band erupts with a boozy harmonica and bashed chord changes around him. All throughout this track though, we don't hear the comparisons: we hear an ambitious band, already versed in their own language, functioning like the best band you've never heard and with their "best-kept-secret" status resting like a chip on their collective shoulder.

Elsewhere you hear the grandeur of a band like Broken Social Scene (the building, anthemic "Upon Viewing Brueghel's 'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus'"), albeit a leaner, hungrier version; maybe Broken Social Scene before they succumbed to the pratfalls of notoriety and "solo" records. This is the kind of grandeur that Titus Andronicus routinely clamors for, throwing themselves into every single note, every single chord change or counter-melodic keyboard part, every change of tempo or structure, every crash of cymbals.

But like perhaps the last great call to arms, At the Drive-In's Relationship of Command (yes, it's that kind of record, although written by a band more interested in destroying the suburbs than destroying fascist dictators), what makes The Airing of Grievances complete is that the band focuses just as much on the slower, detail oriented songs as they do on the spastic punk and the material that would fare well with the patrons of a tightly packed, sweaty rock club. "No Future 1" burns with an almost bluesy feeling and the album's lead track opens with a roughly recorded guitar and vocal (why do bands from New Jersey love that? The Wrens did that constantly on Meadowlands) before the band announces "Fuck you" in unison and storms into a pastiche of all the greatness that will be fully explored over the eight tracks that follow. The tactic works like the opening paragraph of a persuasive essay, in that it gives you a little bit of each argument and then hammers them home in the body of the record.

This is the kind of record you'll spend days rocking out to. You'll get lost walking around listening to it (I know I did), think about quitting your job to relive the days when a record like this was all that was allowed to matter. You'll want to start your own band and take over your own universe. Titus Andronicus is the kind of band that rock-kids will be drawn to and that will remind us all what it was we loved about rock music in the first place. While bands like Nickelback and Hinder rule the airwaves, banging out the safe, lucrative version of what some record company thinks "sounds like" rock music, Titus Andronicus are screaming their lungs out, pouring their hearts into their already breathtaking songs, and carrying themselves with such abandon that you pray they'll end up more like Broken Social Scene than At the Drive-in. Which is to say that you pray their enthusiasm doesn't eat them alive, so that they might continue making records that highlight just how transcendent rock and roll can be.

Reviewed by Cory Tendering
No biographical information is currently available.

01] phoenix 03:48
02] carnies 03:09
03] april grove 03:25
04] something to say 03:50
05] baby blue 02:29
06] shangri la 03:36
07] snowman 03:29
08] da da da da 02:35
09] valentine 02:58
10] poison 03:53
11] razor tongue 02:23
12] yesterday 03:41

TOTAL TiME : 39:16 min

‘The Blue God’ is the second album from British
vocalist Martina Topley-Bird who first gained
exposure through her work with Bristolian trip hop
pioneer Tricky. Coming five years after her 2003
debut ‘Quixotic’ the album, produced by American
hip hop legend Danger Mouse (Gnarls Barkley,
Gorillaz), sees Topley-Bird take her unique vocal
style in a new direction, opting this time for a
more pop orientated sound.

Aimee Mann - Smilers [2008]

ARTIST : Aimee Mann
TITLE : Smilers
LABEL : SuperEgo Records
GENRE : Indie
BITRATE : 170 kbps avg
SOURCE : CD (LP)
PLAYTIME : 00:45:47
SIZE : 59.0MB
STORE DATE : 2008-06-00

Tracklist
————–
1. Freeway 3:50
2. Stranger Into Starman 1:31
3. Looking For Nothing 3:46
4. Phoenix 3:56
5. Borrowing Time 3:12
6. Its Over 3:58
7. 31 Today 4:52
8. The Great Beyond 3:12
9. Medicine Wheel 4:08
10. Columbus Avenue 4:06
11. Little Tornado 3:23
12. True Believer 3:32
13. Ballantines 2:21

http://rapidshare.com/files/112124073/mom.zip.html
http://www.sendspace.com/file/122cix
http://www.badongo.com/file/9167263

duo505 - another illusion - (konkord, 2008)

links assim fs na 1 pagina do google

e bolacha disto?

mas não foi no forum que descobri os links, quem sabe não se deve a notoriedade do forum

hum? pá, se queres q o mesquita receba queixas, força. leaks recentes todos concentrados no mesmo thread, muitos hits, 1 pag google. ao menos esconde com /url ou /code

Back at the beginning of the 1980s Factory Records had the good idea of extending the format of the legendary Factory Sample double 7” to album length. A double LP was issued called A Factory Quartet which gave four acts 20 minutes to do as they please. Aside from three exquisite tracks by the Durutti Column, the result was unfortunately a bit of a stinker. Who now remembers Kevin Hewick or the Royal Family and the Poor? Blurt’s contributions were better, but overall it was a case of great concept, terrible execution (a familiar Factory theme).

Nearly thirty years on, in the age of digital downloads and covermounts with every music mag going, it seems odd to resurrect the idea. But Highpoint Lowlife have done just that. Magnetism, That Electricity is a double vinyl album (limited to 300 numbered copies) which showcases four acts associated with the label. All four are very different, but somehow complementary. And the result is an unqualified triumph.

The Mandelbrot Set kick things off with the four part suite “Astronomy and Allied Sciences”, a seamless blend of strings, guitars and drone. The tension builds through the first three pieces before everything explodes in the controlled frenzy of the fourth. Its total eighteen minute duration feels almost truncated – there isn’t a moment where things meander aimlessly. The more I play it, the shorter it seems. Weird.

Fisk Industries are a very different kettle of, um, fish. This is dark and dirty dubby hip-hop, like Techno Animal mixed by DJ Krush. “Gangu” is relentless, like a wave of zombies: twice it appears to die away before coming back for another attack. “Rhetoric” introduces a mangled, chopped up MC into the mix, and “Crowley” is a brilliant ambient piece that almost moves into dubstep territory.

“The King of All Tears” is a single 20 minute track that combines Stars of the Lid style drone, with the urgent, muted techno pulse that Carl Craig perfected on the classic Landcruising album. Ambient music in a hurry. OK, it’s been done before, but seldom with the finesse that the Village Orchestra manage here. It’s a truly exceptional piece. Think E2-E4 for the drone generation.

The Village Orchestra is apparently a moonlighting third of Glasgow’s The Marcia Blaine School For Girls who close the party with a trio of slow-burning, atmospheric electronic pieces. “Pinar” reminds me of those stream-of-consciousness, low key epics that Underworld do so well. “The Ratio” sounds like an LFO remix of ACR’s “Knife Slits Water”. “Bottle Stain” is a fittingly inspiring end to proceedings – Detroit beats and metallic drone that fades out to the sound of sirens. Marvellous stuff.

As well as the double album, there will be 100 CDR copies and, presumably, downloads available too.

Tracks
* Side A - Mandelbrot Set
A1 Astronomy And Allied Sciences 1a
A2 Astronomy And Allied Sciences 1b
A3 Astronomy And Allied Sciences 2a
A4 Astronomy And Allied Sciences 2b

* Side B - Fisk Industries
B1 Blood
B2 Gangu
B3 Rhetoric
B4 Crowley

* Side C - The Village Orchestra
C1 The King Of All Tears

* Side D - The Marcia Blaine School For Girls
D1 Pinar
D2 The Ratio
D3 Bottle Stain

Website
http://highpointlowlife.com/

After the freak-folk wave--with its emphasis on primitivism and weirdness over chops--crested in the mid '00s, Tompkins Square Records rose to the forefront of outsider acoustic music with a stream of releases and reissues by artists whose one common link was their out-and-out mastery of acoustic string playing. Featuring underground legends and next-generation geniuses, the label was to contemporary folk what Vanguard was to the `60s folk revival.

IMAGINATIONAL ANTHEM, VOLS 1-3 is the label's first box set and compiles three volumes of their incredible IMAGINATIONAL ANTHEM series. Volume One focuses on veterans such as Jack Rose, Sandy Bull, and John Fahey. Volume Two compiles works by contemporary masters such as James Blackshaw and Jose Gonzalez. Volume Three acts as a secret history of modern folk with incredible banjo and guitar picking by the likes of R. Keenan Lawler and George Stavis. An essential purchase for fans of adventurous folk, IMAGINATION ANTHEM VOLS 1-3 is truly transporting acoustic music.